Alone and inside the basement, Jianmen was sitting on the ground in front of the altar, surrounded by several folded pieces of paper sigils and with his wooden wheelchair beside him, in a meditation pose. There were several lit candles placed around him, as well as two incense burners placed on the two front corners of the altar. At the centre of the altar were the sacrifices - a whole white fish caught from the creek inside his farm, a knot made with dried grass and rattan, and a small blue gem.

Jianmen chanted a spell, one syllable at a time and with different lengths of pauses in between in a low voice. As he continued his chanting, the sacrifices at the center of the altar started burning in orange and golden flames. The incense sticks in the burners shortened slowly as the sacrifices became consumed by the flames, the smoke from which did not rise to the space above. But instead, it coiled around the center of the altar like snakes, forming into a small smoke “vortex” with orange and golden flames in the middle.

Cracking sounds came from the sacrifices just like things burning inside a normal fire. When the flame reached its highest, Jianmen tossed three bronze coins into the fire and blew a stream of air towards the flames. The flames reached a new height, then died down as if they were sucked away by something at their roots.

Jianmen pushed the ground with both his hands to launch himself onto the wheelchair, then he rolled towards the altar to pick up the three red hot bronze coins. The sacrifices were all completely burnt down and all that was left was ashes.

When Jianmen held the coins in his right hand and slowly clenched his fist, thousands of different images and pieces of memory replayed in his head: these were the memories from Fubei Li from the past few months - when he sent Fubei Li, one of his more independant avatars to aid Dave and Xyankor on their quest to find the new voidborn in a few millennia, his arrangement for Fubei Li was that they would “synchronize” their memories and findings every two weeks to a month. But somehow, after the first time, Fubei Li did not manage to connect again - up until now.

From the memories, Jianmen finally knew the reason why there was no contact for this long - Fubei Li followed Dave and Xyankor into the realm of Fog Dwellers, which was an immensely remote plane, one that Jianmen had very little knowledge about. And shortly after going into the realm of Fog Dwellers, he joined in on a fight to help the Fog Dwellers defend their realm against a wave of invasion of “creatures of the gaps” and was thus injured in the fight. As of now, he was trying to recover his wounds in a healing pool while reading everything he can get his hands on, trying to understand the realm and Fog Dwellers more.

Aside from the much appreciated knowledge on the history, nature and culture of the Fog Dwellers, the memories did bring Jianmen something of a surprise - that the creatures of the gaps, a kind of beings with similarities to elementals he had never heard of before, actually came from a newly discovered young realm.

A few thoughts crossed Jianmen’s mind as he pondered upon the new information and knowledge Fubei Li gathered from the realm of the Fog Dwellers. All of this information may seem like not that much for the Depth Dwellers or Fog Dwellers, or any relatively high tier elementals or other voidborns, but for an outsider like him and Professor Atkinson and Dolores, this was completely new and could actually answer many of their questions.

And on the other hand, the information gathered by Professor Atkinson and Dolores, thanks to the contract they had with Xyn, was also a precious piece of information, which apparently not many voidborns still knew - a lot of the evidence and records were lost during the rupture and in the subsequent chaotic ages of the different realms, and those who knew till this, had either retreated into seclusive lives, or had chosen not to tell until the right time comes, or just buried their memories deep like the almost immortal Depth Dwellers.

“Shit.” a theory regarding Xyn’s nature formed in Jianmen’s head, one that he intended to share with Professor Atkinson and Dolores, but he then decided to wait - until he could confirm that this theory had some concrete proof or at least indirect evidence. If he had the chance, he would like to ask Xyn himself about this theory, yet he was worried that the answer could be too heavy to handle right now - it would definitely require that he be in much better shape to be able to bear the weight of this knowledge.

If his theory was correct, then it would mean that there was no surprise that Xyn was the first one from the void to have ascended to Godhood. It could even be the case, that he was meant to be the first God.

Jianmen rolled himself out of the basement and into his room. Then with a snap of his finger, three heavy looking thick books appeared in the air right in front of him, all of their pages opened up and the pages started turning by themselves while surrounding Jianmen.

“Mr. Yu?” Rash’s voice came from his door: “Ms. Wong is here.”

“Yeah, yeah, tell her I’ll be there in a minute, I am in the middle of something.”

“Understood.” Rash said through the door: “Oh, also Natalie asked for your answer again - what should I tell her?”

“Don’t tell her anything yet. I’ll give her the answer myself when I have it.”